The characters are, largely, terrible people. When they’re not cheating on their spouses, they’re backstabbing friends, betraying colleagues, mocking neighbours or making spectacularly un-PC comments. But they do make for great entertainment. The parties are plentiful, the innuendoes frequent – many of them involving someone’s impressive equipment – and the jokes inappropriate, as are the relationships (there’s not a HR department big enough to deal with all the workplace bonking going on at Corinium). The show is taking a punt in asking a 2024 audience to be invested in the central will-they-won’t-they love story between Campbell-Black and Declan O’Hara’s innocent looking 20 year-old daughter Taggie, played by Bella Maclean, who has been slightly aged up from the Book, in which she was 18.
One of the show’s most endearing characters is Freddie Jones (Danny Dyer), a self-made millionaire who the old money toffs love to make fun of – along with his wife, Valerie (Lisa McGrillis) – for not adhering to the social rules, or dress codes, of Rutshire. Jones strikes up a flirtation with romance novelist Lizzie Vereker (Parkinson), who on their first encounter encourages him to load up on potatoes from the buffet. These are meet-cutes, Jilly Cooper style.
Rivals was very much a book of its time – and the show takes us right back to that time, from the attitudes and behaviour to the fashion and music. There is copious blue eyeshadow, an abundance of handlebar moustaches, mountains of vol-au-vents and a soundtrack heavy on 1980s pop bangers.
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It does occasionally touch on more sober issues. There are brief mentions of the Aids crisis, as well as Thatcher’s Section 28, a law that banned schools from teaching children about homosexuality – but these sit slightly awkwardly amid the smutty jokes. And while, for the most part, women are enjoying sex as much as the men, there are occasions when it’s not fun, or consensual. Terrible people, especially rich and powerful ones, often get away with terrible things – one way in which Cooper’s world isn’t all that fantastical.
The show is at its best, though, when it doesn’t take itself too seriously. Even the main dramatic arc, a tussle over the future of a regional TV network, is faintly ridiculous. At one point a character gives a rallying speech on the power of television, calling it “the greatest art form man has ever created”. Rivals won’t change the world – but it might be the most fun you have watching a TV show this year.
★★★★☆
Rivals is released on 18 October on Hulu in the US and Disney+ in the UK
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